Professor of Ecology, Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich

Disclosure statement

Sam Williams receives funding from the University of Venda postdoctoral grant. He is affiliated with the University of Venda and Durham University.

Lourens Swanepoel receives funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF RSA), University of Venda, International Foundation for Science and The African Union. He is affiliated with the University of Venda and the African Institute of African Conservation Ecology.

Steven Belmain currently receives funding from The McKnight Foundation, the World Bank and The African Union. He is affiliated with the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich.

But convincing people to conserve wildlife based on these indirect benefits can be challenging – particularly in the case of farmers. After all, carnivores such as leopards can pose a threat to livestock, livelihoods, and sometimes even lives. So interactions between farmers and carnivores have typically been framed as a conflict.

This could change if people were aware of the more tangible benefits that carnivores could provide. Our new study showed that far from causing problems for farmers, carnivores could actually be beneficial by controlling rodent pests.

We set out to find out whether carnivores that eat rodents were found naturally on smallholder farms. We set camera traps on land used for cropping in South Africa, areas used to graze cattle (which was less disturbed than cropland), and among houses in village settlements.

A cape fox (Vulpes chama) on a maize farm feeding on Gerbilliscus, a common rodent pest in South Africa’s grain areas.Lourens Swanepoel, CC BY

We found nine species of carnivores in the camera trap pictures. Rodents are an important part of the diet of seven of the nine, including the striped polecat, honey badger, and African civet. To our surprise, we found that the highest number of carnivore species were often found in the cropping area, which included species such as the large spotted genet and slender mongoose.

So not only are carnivores present on farmers’ fields, but it’s likely that they are also controlling rodents that would otherwise damage crops. But more research is needed to confirm this.

Infographic summarising the findings of the study of rodent control by carnivores on South African farms.Sam Williams

We set about establishing whether people were aware of the potential connection between the presence of carnivores on their farms and rodent control. During a series of interviews it quickly became clear that even though some people believed that carnivores ate rodents, they still had negative perceptions and often killed them.

Big potential

The idea to use natural predation to control rodents is not new. But to use mammalian predators to assist in biological control of rodent pests has often been neglected in conservation circles. As such there is great potential for carnivores to help farmers, but for this to work, farmers would need to stop killing them.

Changing these perceptions would take a lot of work. But efforts to change African perceptions about predatory birds, particularly barn owls, have been successful in some South African townships. Successful approaches to change community attitudes has often relied on education programmes through local schools. Bringing owls, snakes and other predators to primary schools can help raise awareness among children, who then go home and educate their parents, ultimately breaking down widely held superstitions.

If education campaigns could convince farmers to kill fewer carnivores, carnivores might just repay the favour by doing a better job of controlling rodents in crop fields. This could lead to less reliance on poisons, avoiding unnecessary killings and costs.

If successful, this could help farmers to save money, while working in a much more environmentally friendly way. This really could be a win-win situation for both people and wildlife, and it shows that interactions between people and carnivores on farmland can be much more nuanced and positive than the traditional image of conflict.

Finding new ways in which people and wildlife can coexist will be essential to lessen the impact of the growing human population on the ecosystems on which humans depend.